You’ve asked this before and received a good answer already.

During the summer most aircraft are highly utilised, often flying two or sometimes three return flights per day. Obviously it is to their advantage to have one or two aircraft at a slightly lower utilisation so that they may be used as backup should anything go wrong (TUI cannot simply cancel flights like most airlines).

Of course, during the winter utilisation is obviously lower as demand is also lower. Several 737s and all 767s are leased elsewhere in the winter months and TUI also use this time to carry out significant maintenance on aircraft. However, upon grounding of the MAXs, TUI often struggled to cope even during the winter months so clearly utilisation is not that low with most aircraft probably flying one return flight per day (usually longer flights to Canaries/Cyprus), some will operate two, some none. For an example of lower utilisation in winter months, look at Jet2.

TUI Airways has acquired 2 Airbus A321s (SX-ACP, and SX-ABY) which are both Ex-Olympus Aircraft, or as most people know them as, Ex-Monarch. They are due to enter service on Friday 17th May 2019 (6 days from now)
This will be covering the continued MAX8 grounding. As you may know, TUI Airways has also acquired additional leased Boeing 737s to cover this grounding.

Stuart

I don’t think it’s right to say TUI have “acquired” these aircraft or that they are “ex-Olympus”. I’m pretty sure they're very much still Olympus aircraft, TUI are just leasing them for now. SX-ABY has already started flying for TUI today. They are supposedly due another Olympus 321 at BHX at some point also.

Sunwing did it last week and TOM this week so doesn’t look like they’re flying specific routes, although that may change.

On another note (and I know we shouldn’t always believe FR24 but there must be a reason that this has been changed), from tomorrow onwards half of the GLA departures are showing as 75W whilst the other half show as 73H/7M8. There have been talks of a 757 returning to GLA at some point although this looks unlikely unless the idle 757s are returned to service (or they lease another Titan perhaps).

There looks to be at the moment 5x longer term leases with any others on an ad hoc basis
the Titan A320 at STN
2x Norwegian 738 at LGW (a/c) rotate and alternate with the Norwegian operation afaik
2x Olympus A321 at MAN & BHX

Wonder if, when at short notice the aircraft changes to a larger aircraft eg 738 to 757 they then release all the additional seats for FO and package deals? Financially of course makes sense but logistically wonder how easy it is to do

There's also Titan A320 at LGW, Titan 757 at BHX, ASL 738 at CWL. I believe that’s all of the regulars for now. There have been a few ad hoc wide-bodies from MAN over the last couple of days (Privilege Style 767, Wamos and XL A330s) with some horrible delays (one was approx 12 hours). G-OBYG is now back in service with TOM though and G-TUID is out of LTN (possibly in s/h config?) so hopefully there will be no more need for these ad hoc charters. G-TUII however seems to be operating Nordic s/h flights at the moment so this won't be helping. OBYH appears to still be in Taipei for now also.

would the UK Dreamliner operating in the nordics have anything to do with se-rfr being out of service for a week. Seems to be at DGX from 4th may after operating for TUI UK for a couple of weeks

Actually not exactly. The Airbus A321 (Ex-Monarchs) flying on Lease from Olympus Airways. They are Olympus Pilots but there is TUI and Sunwing Cabin crew. Told it was mostly TUI cabin crew with one Olympus Cabin Crew for safety apparently.

It is likely Olympus cabin crew as the TUI crew are not trained on the aircraft nor Olympus operating procedures however TUI will have representatives onboard. Other airlines normally put their crew on to do the on board service so that nothing is different for the passengers.

Sounds like a non harmonious shambles...
Reminds me of the TransAer A320 and CanAfrica DC8 shenanigans.

Norwegian have been operating charter flights on behalf of Tui for a few years now out of Gatwick. These are dedicated 100% Tui charter flights. I believe it’s two aircraft this summer. Possibly three? This was all planned well in advance of the MAX issues and has absolutely nothing to do with Tui being aircraft short because of the grounding of the MAX. It’s simply to supply additional capacity for Tui holidays during the summer season out of Gatwick.

Looks like TUI are flying their MAN departures via LPL to fuel up before heading to the destinations. Heavily delayed leaving MAN and then obviously further delays after going via LPL but better than cancelling like the vast majority of MAN departures have been.

Haven’t really seen anyone mention this but looks like the LTN base has had major cutbacks this summer. I did wonder as LTN normally has 2 or 3 based aircraft but has only had one based since the beginning of the season. I know that FR24 is not accurate but it shows 3-4 scheduled departures per day, when in reality there are usually only one or two. The TUI website obviously only shows those flights which remain but it really highlights the scale of reductions. However, looking ahead, there is a very brief period from the end of July until the end of August (around 5 weeks) where the timetable shows something more similar to FR24 (thus presumably what was originally planned for the entire season).

Can anyone elaborate on this? Were the cuts made a while ago or was this all rather short notice? I am aware of the disruption the MAX issues have caused, however, there have been no leased aircraft at LTN to help out so is this all down to poor bookings?

Anyone got a S19 update of based aircraft at each airport